


eyes are open finally

by mildlydiscouraging



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Getting Back Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Missing Scene, Mixtape, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-21 04:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12449556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mildlydiscouraging/pseuds/mildlydiscouraging
Summary: Dating someone for the first time was weird enough—dating someone again is like relearning a set of rules without knowing if you actually understood them the first time around. Good rules, though. Rules that involve good morning texts and holding hands and smiling. And kissing. Lots of kissing.





	eyes are open finally

Adam is sitting on top of their usual table with his back against the wall, soaking up the last of the sun's warmth left in the bricks. It's started to finally feel like fall so he's committed to relishing what will undoubtedly be the last weeks of being able to eat lunch outside. Even though so much has happened in the past twelve months, it feels like just yesterday he was sitting down for the first day of junior year.

In the middle of his musing, Caleb rounds the corner and tosses him a bottle of cherry soda. "Here you go, your disgustingness."

Adam rolls his eyes but opens the bottle anyway, saying, "It's not my fault you can't accept the fact that artificial cherry is way better than the real thing."

"No, it's fine, you can just sit there in your wrongness and be wrong."

"Do you even know what that's from?"

Caleb is quiet for a moment. "No, you just say it all the time."

With a laugh Adam takes a sip of his soda. "Of course."

Caleb keeps standing there for about two seconds too long before he drops something in Adam's lap and sits on the bench. "I made you another mix," he says, staring intently at his own soda.

Looking down, Adam sees a CD case with a blank disc in it, pristine and inconspicuous like something you'd see in a movie where the underdog hacker protagonists put it in someone's computer and it hacks through to the World Bank or something. It is very Caleb, though. No explanations, nothing ostentatious, but somehow all the more noticeable for it.

"Wow, old school." He picks up the case and turns it over but there's no tracklist or anything on the back. Also very Caleb. "I guess I'll just listen to it when I get home?"

Awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck, Caleb stares into the middle distance over the soccer field across from them as he says, "Yeah... I guess I didn't think that part through."

They've been back together for only a weekend and even though they both very much know how the other feels, Adam still isn't always sure what's okay again and what they're not quite back up to yet. Like, they made out for almost an hour on Saturday, but he doesn't know if he's allowed to hold Caleb's hand as they walk to class. Dating someone for the first time was weird enough—dating someone again is like relearning a set of rules without knowing if you actually understood them the first time around. Good rules, though. Rules that involve good morning texts and holding hands and smiling. And kissing. Lots of kissing.

After a second of consideration, Adam shakes his head and says, "No, I'm into it. Very mysterious." As he carefully tucks the case into his bag Adam can feel Caleb watching him with his blank face that means he's nervous, so he smiles when he looks back up. "Hey, did I tell you about what happened in stats today?"

Adam manages to largely control his curiosity until he gets home, at which point he forces himself to focus on homework _(Did you listen to it yet??)_ , college essays _(I can't, I have stuff to finish first and I can't get distracted)_ , stilted conversations with his parents _(Oh? And why would you get distracted?)_ , refolding every piece of clothing he owns _(Shut up, you know why)_ , brushing his teeth like four times _(lmao)_ , and basically anything other than that tantalizing little green plastic square tucked inside his physics notebook that he knows will take over his brain the second he opens it.

It's only after dinner that he caves, shutting off all the lights in his room and carefully, carefully dropping the disc into his computer. iTunes takes a painfully long time to load and he stares at his desktop background while trying not to bounce his leg too anxiously. His background is still the tiled ridiculous selfie of them both that Caleb had set as a joke and Adam hasn't had the heart to change yet. It isn't helping the anticipation.

Judging by the last mixtape Caleb made him (in the before, which simultaneously feels like a decade ago and last week) it'll be upbeat and just this side of mainstream, and Adam will retaliate with the deepest cuts he can think of to hide the fact that he's actually really touched.

It's downloading now, twelve unnamed tracks (because Caleb), and Adam is thinking of the first time he'd made Caleb a playlist with an actual purpose more than "songs that are good and you should listen to". Any kind of deeper meaning completely flew over Caleb's head until he eventually got it, and reciprocated, and Adam spent hours listening to it on repeat every night they didn't talk, and....

He doesn't know what to expect now. Like, at all. In general, really, but here specifically. Regardless of whatever theories he might have, though, he's definitely for sure not expecting to hit play on the first track and hear Caleb himself.

But he does.

"I know I'm still kinda new to the whole mixtapes thing, and I'll definitely never be as good as you," the Caleb in his headphones says, "but you said the other day that you like listening to my voice and I thought maybe you might like this. So, uh, this first one..."

As recorded Caleb narrates his way through the tracklist Adam saves them each in as many places as possible because he doesn't want to lose any of this ever. There's a point where Caleb flubs a word so bad that Adam doesn't even know what it was supposed to be and just as Adam starts to make a mental note to tease him about it Caleb laughs and it's so wonderful Adam considers looking up the signs of a heart attack. Instead he just maybe plays it on repeat two or three or ten times. And then clips out all the introductory bits of Caleb talking. And then saves all those separately to his phone. And then maybe listens to them a lot more and falls asleep while Caleb is explaining why he chose a song (and isn't that just the sweetest, his big handsome jock boyfriend loving this semi-obscure indie folk band and comparing it to how Adam makes him feel, and, okay, maybe Adam does some happy kicking before falling asleep, sue him).

In the morning he forces himself to listen to the songs only, unable to stop thinking about it but knowing that listening to the full version on the bus surrounded by people is a bad idea. It's still playing when Adam gets to his locker where Caleb is waiting for him, trying to look like he's not waiting for him. Adam takes out his earbuds, and it must be playing loud enough to recognize as Caleb's eyes widen slightly and closes his mouth without saying anything. He's smiling a little though? So that's a good sign.

Adam opens his locker like everything's perfectly normal—which, to be fair, it is. Blissfully normal. Stupendously normal.

"Hey."

"Hey." Caleb gestures at the earbuds still dangling from Adam's hand. "Um. Did you like it?"

Now it's Adam's turn to pretend to be casual, although really he's just smiling too much to make eye contact. "Yeah, it was... It was good."

They stare blankly at each other for a moment, not sure what they're allowed to say, until Adam reaches over to grab Caleb's hand and says, "I mean, y'know. I liked it."

A slow smile spreads across Caleb's face. "You know you have no poker face when it comes to me, right?"

"Shut up." Adam hops up on his toes to quickly kiss Caleb on the cheek before pulling him down the hallway. "Come on, we have to get to class."

Caleb lets them get a few feet before he says anything.

"So, what," he says teasingly, "did you fall asleep to the sound of my voice or something?"

When Adam reflexively looks away, Caleb's face lights up with giddy understanding.

"You _did_ , didn't you?"

"Don't."

"Oh my god, that's so embarrassing."

"Shut up! You're the one who made it in the first place," Adam fires back even as he feels his face warming up.

Caleb only laughs and uses their linked hands to tug Adam closer as he leans over him. "You like me _so_ much."

"I mean, _yeah_."

And he doesn't say _it_ , yet, but he's pretty sure Caleb already knows—that even if he couldn't know exactly everything Adam feels, it would be obvious—and thinking over everything he heard last night, he's pretty sure he feels the same.

Knowing it is a pretty good feeling, but at lunch when Adam turns the corner to see Caleb leaning against the wall next to their table waiting for him and he gets to kiss him in the warm September sunlight as long as he wants, and he feels it, and that afternoon when they're lying on Caleb's bed holding hands and he gets to say it, and he hears it, it's even better.

[❝—❞](https://open.spotify.com/user/mildlydiscouraging/playlist/6Q13YbVlJ8uaPbGyMyXNRv)

_"... I don't really have anything to say about it. It's kinda obvious. Plus, I know you can't resist the emo. Dork."_

_"Consider this payback for that Hozier song last time. Plus, y'know, it's true. In, uh, a lot of ways, I guess."_

_"Uh huh, yep, more emo. You love it. No but actually I guess this is just... You know. How the world sort of did catch up to us, but we're still here."_

_"Remember last year when we had to read Frankenstein and you kept getting mad every time someone tried to fight you about reading the monster as a metaphor for being gay? And when you got too mad you would make me hold your hand until you calmed down? That was the first time, uh, I realized that maybe I could do the same thing for you that you do for me, and now I know for sure, I guess, so yeah."_

_"Everything about this is true except you definitely have a heart, I promise. Florence doesn't know shit."_

_"This one is kind of self-explanatory and you can't make fun because I know you love this album, so just shut up and enjoy it."_

_"You can argue as much as you like but this album is the best thing Nate Ruess has ever done and you're just gonna have to accept that. ... I promise next summer we'll do all the things we planned, okay? I don't know why I'm asking you, you can't respond, okay, here's the song."_

_"Chloe made me put this on here because she played it for me over the summer and heard me thinking of you during it and when she found out I was making this she wouldn't leave me alone until I included it. Blame her."_

_"... I guess the point of this one is just that this band always calms me down and so do you. Not all of these are thought out, okay? I'm trying."_

_"Alice showed me this one and I like the original better but I figured the cinematically emo orchestra shit would appeal to you. I, uh... It sounds like you. How you feel. It sounds the way your feelings feel. I know, it's stupid..."_

_"I'm sorry. I know you told me to stop saying it but I am."_

_"... And I know we weren't... talking then but this whole album reminds me of you and I was kinda hoping that maybe now, I don't know, we could listen to it together? Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow."_

**Author's Note:**

> uh. [here's the mixtape](https://open.spotify.com/user/mildlydiscouraging/playlist/6Q13YbVlJ8uaPbGyMyXNRv), in case you missed the link in the fic itself. i didn't mean to actually make it but then i got REALLY into it so you all might as well get to listen lmao
> 
> a few fudged dates vis-à-vis specific versions of songs on the mixtape that technically came out on days that haven't happened yet in canon. pretend alice is a hardcore bastille stan who somehow got a boot of this particular version of glory. we've all been there. hell, i still have my old recording of oil on water, i fucking get it, man. uh. anyway.
> 
> the working title of this was "when you wanna have sex with your boyfriend but mostly you just love him" and so that's what all the songs are about: being in love with your boyfriend who is really cute and really good at kissing. like coalesce? hoo boy. white ferrari??? you KNOW he cried. i could do more track by track commentary but i'm restraining myself atm, anyway, thank you for your time.
> 
> gotta apologize again to my good friend ralph pelleymounter but i stole your words again. title from "choices" by to kill a king, which is on the mix and has made me CRY at least once a month for the past four years i think.
> 
> tumblr @[moonfullofstars](http://moonfullofstars.tumblr.com)  
> ko-fi @[mildlydiscouraging](https://ko-fi.com/mildlydiscouraging)


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